Wednesday, March 17, 2010

My Favorite Characters: The Imaginative Ion

With the 12 hour comic challenge and the 48 hour bitch-virus-from-hell successfully defeated, I wish you a mucus-free Happy St. Patrick's day!
In honor of the greenest day, I bring you Earth's greenest Green Lantern (what with Jade being dead and all (oh, Jade, why? why?)) Kyle Rayner.
I really dig Green Lantern comics. And my favorite local (Earth) boy in that venerable veridian cadre is the newbie.
O.K., that doesn't mean I don't like the rage-o-holic Guy Gardener, the venerable Alan Scott, the non-t.v.-pundit John Stewart, and (despite the excellent recent efforts of the excellent Geoff Johns) last place after a dead green girl, a 31st Century guy (also dead), and an unofficial 24th-and-1/2 Century cartoon mallard: Hal Jordan.
It just means I like Kyle, all right?
And what's not to like? Created in 1994 by Ron Marz and company, I just gotta resonate with the slacker artist type. I like Kyle for saying what his character has said for 16 years: that a randomly selected pretty good human with imagination and a loving heart is equally as worthy as 'the most fearless man' or 'the most honest man'. Not that I advocate cowardice and dishonesty. It's just that 'Fearless' and 'Honest' as the only criterion in giving out nigh-infinite power results in Guy Gardener (who, though I love him, is a total lunatic). Plus, they hired Sinestro with those qualities. And he's a control freak space dictator.
Poor Kyle Rayner is as quick to fall in love as the universe seems willing to kill his lovers. And I can't find it in my heart to blame Kyle as the dead girlfriends pile up like cordwood. I can't help but like a guy who loves, loses, loves again, loses again, loves and loses, loves upon her surprisingly unlikely resurrection and still loses, and now, loves again.
Cross your fingers, Dr. Soranik Natu of Korugar, brave red daughter of Sinestro: Kyle Rayner loves you.
So keep loving even when the universe is against you, use your imagination, and be human. Like that best of a bad lot of 90's kids: Kyle Rayner.

2 comments:

The Doc said...

Ah, Kyle. I never really understood the whole Kyle/Hal controversy; I thought they were both okay. But they didn't hold a candle to the greatest Green Lantern of them all. That's right, I'm talkin' 'bout KILOWOG, baby!

Mike The Bold said...

Can't go wrong with the 'wog.